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Comment by gruez | Hacker News Reader

Yeah IANAL, but this sort of endorsement with undisclosed remuneration would probably run afoul of FTC guidelines, which is why you see disclaimers like "As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases" everywhere. The author seems to live in the UK, but a cursory search suggests there's something similar there as well.

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Maybe the whole world is not in the U.S. What is the FTC? The Royal Air Force Flying Training Command?

Federal Trade Commission

An acronym as common as GDPR.

I'm just making a point the whole world doesn't revolve around America.

There will also be obnoxious farts who say "the world doesn't revolve around the EU" every time GDPR is mentioned.

It kinda does though

I guess it’s reference to the fact that the blog writer lives in London, so the US meaning of FTC doesn’t matter when a someone in Europe promotes a US service

>The author seems to live in the UK, but a cursory search suggests there's something similar there as well.

Now I'm curious, how is it called in the UK? I tend to use "FTC" as the general term when I want to refer to a trade regulatory body in a country, as in "UK's FTC equivalent". I wasn't aware it is so obscure?

Probably the UK CMA (Competition and Markets Authority) which regulates competition/antitrust, mergers, national security acquisitions and the like.

Or there is a loosely defined locally-run thing called 'Trading Standards' which is done at the council ("municipality") level.

and for the record I am just being difficult and everyone in tech/mildly well read knows what the (U.S.) FTC is. My point is more that one country's rules don't always matter for the operations of domestic commerce in another amongst their own citizens.

We famously mock our own jusrisprudence - "if Parliament passes a law that it is illegal to smoke on the streets of Paris, then it is illegal to smoke on the streets in Paris", so even when hard legislation exists (4chan/Ofcom shitshow?) it is meaningless.

The only power that matters long term in the universe is sheer force and hard power, and it has always been that way.

the fact that you can't name the UK equivalent offhand should tell you how obscure these regional agency names and acronyms are in general.

> Maybe the whole world is not in the U.S

Not yet. Working on it, though.

It's pretty fair to assume someone on a USA site, run by an American company, that is a major VC firm based in San Francisco, in an article talking about moving away from another USA company that is located all of 2 miles away from ycombinator, and speaking english should be able to put 2 and 2 together when dealing with contextual information.

If they can't they probably should move to an international focused site.

The author of the article is not from the US, and is talking about a Slovenian alternative to Cloudflare.

Either way, we are on the internet. Pretty international stuff.

Maybe it technically under some regulation runs afoul. The FTC would never bother themselves with this and I don’t believe it’s in the spirit of the intent.

They might not enforce it consistently, but they do bother themselves with it enough to have guidelines.

https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/disclosures-...

Right and some random blog is never going to be enforced.

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